The rapid development of science and technology, the information explosion and the necessity to keep pace with the times all have had a tremendous impact on the central nervous system. The resultant stresses almost invariably lead either to superexcitation or to abnormal sleepiness and strongly affect people's health and working capacity.
Drugs that are often used in such cases normally contain toxic narcotics. Prolonged courses of drug therapy may result in habit formation so that the patient has to be given higher doses or more potent drugs.
A number of attempts have been made to dispense with drug therapy by exposing the central nervous system to the effects of such physical phenomena as light or sound. For example, there is known a method which makes use of regularly repeated light and audio effects, such as the sound of ocean breakers or the monotonous noises of rain. The method produces inhibition of the cerebral cortex and sometimes makes a patient fall asleep, but it is not effective enough to reestablish normal sleeping habits and thus eliminate abnormalities of biorhythms which cause sleeplessness or, on the contrary, make a person sleepy during the day.
The method under review largely depends on the psychophysilogic state of an individual and at times may prove to be ineffective. There have been attempts to combine the effects of monotonous audio and light signals; although more effective than the foregoing method, such attempts have not produced consistently good results. It can thus be inferred that monotonous signals are not the ultimate solution. It was then found that the action on the central nervous system could be intensified by varying the frequency, duration and amplitude of signals according to an electroencephalogram. Unlike monotonous signals, signals with varied parameters are more effective in altering the biorhythmic pattern and eliminating sleep distrubances. Yet the positive effect of such treatment cannot be maintained over a prolonged period of time.
The latter method is effected with the aid of a device comprising a controlled audio pulse pacemaker, a controlled light pulse pacemaker, and a unit for controlling the two pacemakers according to variations of bioelectric currents of the brain recorded during sleep. The device has all the disadvantages inherent in the method which it is intended to carry out. It must further be pointed out that none of the known devices of this type are capable of controlling the level of wakefulness.